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Books > History > African history > General
This volume offers a comprehensive history and analysis of the Democratic Republic of the Congo during the tumultuous period of 1997-2001. The author examines the most recent events in this turbulent region, offering a contemporary account that is both extensive and detailed.
Whether by falling prey to Algerian corsairs or crashing onto the desert shores of Western Sahara, a handful of Americans in the first years of the Republic found themselves enslaved in a system that differed so markedly from nineteenth century U.S. slavery that some contemporaries and modern scholars hesitate to categorize their experiences as 'slavery.' Sears uses a comparative approach, placing African enslavement of Americans and Europeans in the context of Mediterranean and Ottoman slaveries, while individually investigating the system of slavery in Algiers and Western Sahara. This work illuminates the commonalities and peculiarities of these slaveries, while contributing to a growing body of literature that showcases the flexibility of slavery as an institution.
This personal memoir composed by a medieval scholar reveals an
important discourse with two Ismaili leaders who spearheaded the
Fatimid revolution in North Africa in 909-910. By reporting the
thoughts and activities of Abu 'Abdallah al-Shi'i and his brother
Abu'l-Abbas over a period of seven months, Ibn al-Haytham in his
Kitab al-Munazarat (The Book of Discussions) provides an
unparalleled insider's view to the foundations of the Fatimid
state. As such, it is a unique document in the literature of early
Islamic revolutionary movements as much as it represents one of the
most valuable sources for the history of the medieval Muslim
world.
Many of the photographs are as familiar as they are iconic: Nelson Mandela gazing through the bars of his prison cell on Robben Island; a young Miriam Makeba smiling and dancing; Hugh Masekela as a schoolboy receiving the gift of a trumpet from Louis Armstrong; Henry ‘Mr Drum’ Nxumalo; the Women’s March of 1955; the Sophiatown removals; the funeral of the Sharpeville massacre victims … Photographer Jürgen Schadeberg was the man behind the camera, recording history as it unfolded in apartheid South Africa, but his personal story is no less extraordinary. His affiliation for the displaced, the persecuted and the marginalised was already deeply rooted by the time he came to South Africa from Germany in 1950 and began taking pictures for the fledgling Drum magazine. In this powerfully evocative memoir of an international, award-winning career spanning over 50 years – in Europe, Africa and the US – this behind-the-scenes journey with a legendary photojournalist and visual storyteller is a rare and special privilege. Schadeberg’s first-hand experiences as a child in Berlin during the Second World War, where he witnessed the devastating effect of the repressive Nazi regime, and felt the full wrath of the Allied Forces’ relentless bombing of the city, are vividly told. The only child of an actress, who left her son largely to his own devices, Jürgen became skilled at living by his wits, and developed a resourcefulness that held him in good stead throughout his life. At the end of the war, his mother married a British officer and emigrated to South Africa, leaving Jürgen behind in a devastated Germany to fend for himself. With some luck and a great deal of perseverance, he was able to pursue his interest in photography in Hamburg, undergoing training as an unpaid ‘photographic volunteer’ at the German Press Agency, then graduating to taking photos at football matches. After two years there, Jürgen made the decision to travel to South Africa. He arrived at Johannesburg station on a cold winter’s morning. He had a piece of paper with his mother’s address on it, his worldly possessions in a small, cheap suitcase on the platform beside him, and his Leica camera, as always, around his neck.
Ghana has always held a position of primacy in the African political and historical imagination, due in no small part to the indelible impression left president Kwame Nkrumah. This study examines the symbolic strategies he used to construct the Ghanaian state through currency, stamps, museums, flags, and other public icons.
The Mummy, A Handbook of Egyptian Funerary Archaeology is linguist and Orientalist E.A. Wallis Budge's detailed overview of Egyptian funeral practices and beliefs. Included is a history of Egypt, as well as the translation of common hieroglyphs, to augment readers' understanding of Egyptian culture. He describes in detail the wrapping and burying of mummies, the attendants to the tombs and the dead, drawings and hieroglyphs found on tomb walls, coffins and sarcophagi, treasures buried with the dead, and scarabs, among other things. This book is a beautiful complement to The Book of the Dead, which describes the Egyptian afterlife and the motivations for detailed and drawn-out burials. This edition is the revised and enlarged edition, originally published in 1925. SIR ERNEST ALFRED THOMPSON WALLIS BUDGE (1857-1934) was born in Bodmin, Cornwall in the UK and discovered an interest in languages at a very early age. Budge spent all his free time learning and discovering Semitic languages, including Assyrian, Syriac, and Hebrew. Eventually, through a close contact, he was able to acquire a job working with Egyptian and Iraqi artifacts at the British Museum. Budge excavated and deciphered numerous cuneiform and hieroglyphic documents, contributing vastly to the museum's collection. Eventually, he became the Keeper of his department, specializing in Egyptology. Budge wrote many books during his lifetime, most specializing in Egyptian life, religion, and language.
Knowledge And Global Power is a ground-breaking international study which examines how knowledge is produced, distributed and validated globally. The former imperial nations – the rich countries of Europe and North America – still have a hegemonic position in the global knowledge economy. Fran Collyer, Raewyn Connell, João Maia and Robert Morrell, using interviews, databases and fieldwork, show how intellectual workers respond in three Southern tier countries, Brazil, South Africa and Australia. The study focuses on new, socially and politically important research fields: HIV/AIDS, climate change and gender studies. The research demonstrates emphatically that ‘place matters’, shaping research, scholarship and knowledge itself. But it also shows that knowledge workers in the global South have room to move, setting agendas and forming local knowledge.
Violent Accounts presents a compelling study of how ordinary people commit extraordinary acts of violence and how perpetrators and victims manage in the aftermath. Grounded in extensive, qualitative analysis of perpetrator testimony, the volume reveals the individual experiences of perpetrators as well as general patterns of influence that lead to collective violence. Drawing on public testimony from the amnesty hearings of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the book interweaves hundreds of hours of testimony from seventy-four violent perpetrators in apartheid South Africa, including twelve major cases that involved direct interactions between victims and perpetrators. The analysis of perpetrator testimony covers all tiers on the hierarchy of organized violence, from executives who translated political doctrine into general strategies, to managers who translated these general strategies into specific plans, to the staff-the foot soldiers-who carried out the destructive plans of these managers. Vivid and accessible, Violent Accounts is a work of innovative scholarship that transcends the particulars of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to reveal broader themes and unexpected insights about perpetrators of collective violence, the confrontations between victims and perpetrators in the aftermath of this violence, the reality of multiple truths, the complexities of reconciliation, and lessons of restorative justice.
John Brown Russwurm and African American Settlement in West Africa examines Russwurm's intellectual accomplishments and significant contributions to the black civil rights movement in America from 1826 - 1829, and more significantly explores the essential characteristics that distinguished his thoughts and endeavours from other black leaders in America, Liberia and Maryland in Liberia. Not surprisingly, the most controversial of Russwurm's ideas was his unwavering support of the American Colonization Society (ACS) and the Maryland State Colonization Society (MSCS), two organizations that most civil rights activists found racist and pro-slavery. Beyan probes the social and intellectual sources, underlying motives and the legacies of Russwurm's thoughts and endeavours, all in an attempt to dissect why Russwurm acted and made the choices that he did.
A microcosmic study of nineteenth century British imperialism.
Longlisted for South Africa's 2022 Sunday Times Non-fiction Award Definitive and gripping narrative history of the Communist Party of South Africa. Renowned historian Tom Lodge has written an immensely readable and compelling sweep of history, spanning continents and the last hundred years, producing the first comprehensive account of the South African Communist Party in all its intricacies. Taking the story back to the party's pre-history in the early 20th century reveals that it was shaped by a range of socialist traditions and that their influence persisted and were decisive. The party's engagement in popular front politics after 1935 has been largely uncharted: this book supplies fresh detail. In the 1940s the author shows how the party became a key actor in the formation of black working-class politics, and hitherto unused archival materials as well as the insights from an increasingly candid genre of autobiographies make possible a much fuller picture of the secret party of 1952 to 1965. Despite its concealment and tiny numbers, its intellectual impact on black South African mainstream politics was considerable. On the exile period, the author examines the activities of the party's recruits and more informal following inside South Africa, as well as the scope and nature of its broader influence. In 1990, a year in which global politics would change fundamentally, South African communists would return to South Africa to begin the work of reconstructing their party as a legal organisation. Throughout its history, the party had been inspired and supported by the reality of existing socialism, state systems embracing half of Europe and Asia, in which the ruling group was at least notionally committed to the building of communist societies. With the fall of Eastern European regimes and the fragmentation of the Soviet Union, one key set of material foundations for the party's programmatic beliefs crumbled and its most important international alliances in the global socialist community in Eastern Europe and Russia would end. Finally, Lodge brings the story up to date, assessing the degree to which communists both inside and outside government have shaped and influenced policy in successive ANC-led administrations, particularly during the popular resistance to apartheid during the 1950s, which was underpinned by the party's systematic organisation in the localities that supplied the ANC with its strongest bases. Jacana: Africa, India
This ground-breaking book offers unique insights into the careers of Indian doctors in colonial Kenya during the height of British colonialism, between 1895 and 1940. The story of these important Indian professionals presents a rare social history of an important political minority.
This book transforms our understanding of the recent political history of Central Africa. It charts the complex life and thought of Harry Nkumbula (ca. 1917-1983), the first openly nationalist African politician in Northern Rhodesia and, later, the leader of parliamentary opposition during Zambia's multi-party First Republic. Based mainly on his personal papers and the newly opened archives of UNIP, Zambia's ruling party between 1964 and 1991, the volume looks at how Nkumbula imagined a Zambian nation for the first time and, later, presented a liberal alternative to dominant state-led models of political and economic development. By exploring the trajectory of Nkumbula's ANC, a minority liberal party with strong ethnic roots, the book throws new light on the under-acknowledged fractiousness of Zambian nationalism and warns against reading African post-colonial politics solely in terms of clientelism.
The future of mining in South Africa is hotly contested. Wide-ranging views from multiple quarters rarely seem to intersect, placing emphasis on different questions without engaging in holistic debate. This book aims to catalyse change by gathering together fragmented views into unifying conversations. It highlights the importance of debating the future of mining in South Africa and for reaching consensus in other countries across the mineral-dependent globe. It covers issues such as the potential of platinum to spur industrialisation, land and dispossession on the platinum belt, the roles of the state and capital in mineral development, mining in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the experiences of women in and affected by mining since the late 19th century and mine worker organising: history and lessons and how post-mine rehabilitation can be tackled. It was inspired not only by an appreciation of South Africa’s extensive mineral endowments, but also by a realisation that, while the South African mining industry performs relatively well on many technical indicators, its management of broader social issues leaves much to be desired. It needs to be deliberated whether the mining industry can play as critical a role going forward as it did in the evolution of the country’s economy.
In the period between the outbreak of World War II in 1939 and the enactment of university apartheid by the Nationalist Government in 1959, the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (Wits) developed as an ‘open university’, admitting students of all races. This, the second volume of the history of Wits by historian Bruce Murray, has as its central theme the process by which Wits became ‘open’, the compromises this process entailed, and the defence the University mounted to preserve its ‘open’ status in the face of the challenges posed by the Nationalist Government. The University’s institutional autonomy is highlighted by Yunus Ballim in his preface to the centenary edition of WITS: The ‘Open’ Years. He writes: ‘The emerging posture of a university willing to rise in defence of academic freedom was important because this was to become infused into the institutional culture of Wits.’ The book looks at the University’s role in South Africa’s war effort, its contribution to the education of ex-volunteers after the war, its leading role in training job-seeking professionals required by a rapidly expanding economy, and the rise of research and postgraduate study. Students feature prominently through their political activities, the flourishing of a student intelligentsia, the heyday of the Remember and Give (Rag) parade, rugby intervarsity, and the stunning success of Wits sportsmen and women. Wits: The ‘Open’ Years paints a vivid picture of the range of personalities who enlivened the campus – among them some well-known figures in the new South Africa. The book includes chapters by Alf Stadler, who was Professor of Political Studies at Wits and the author of The Political Economy of Modern South Africa, and Jonty Winch, former Sports Officer at Wits and the author of Wits Sport.
A merchant's account of his travels through an independent African state Muhammad ibn 'Umar al-Tunisi (d. 1274/1857) belonged to a family of Tunisian merchants trading with Egypt and what is now Sudan. Al-Tunisi was raised in Cairo and a graduate of al-Azhar. In 1803, at the age of fourteen, al-Tunisi set off for the Sultanate of Darfur, where his father had decamped ten years earlier. He followed the Forty Days Road, was reunited with his father, and eventually took over the management of the considerable estates granted to his father by the sultan of Darfur. In Darfur is al-Tunisi's remarkable account of his ten-year sojourn in this independent state. In Volume One, al-Tunisi relates the history of his much-traveled family, his journey from Egypt to Darfur, and the reign of the noted sultan 'Abd al-Rahman al-Rashid. In Darfur combines literature, history, ethnography, linguistics, and travel adventure, and most unusually for its time, includes fifty-two illustrations, all drawn by the author. In Darfur is a rare example of an Arab description of Africa on the eve of Western colonization and vividly evokes a world in which travel was untrammeled by bureaucracy, borders were fluid, and startling coincidences appear almost mundane. A bilingual Arabic-English edition.
I have tried to give the public some idea of what was done by Boer women, during the great Anglo-Boer war, to keep their men in the field and to support them in what proved to be a hopeless struggle for independence and liberty. As far as I was able I have also described the perils and hardships connected with the Secret Service of the Boers and the heroism and resource displayed by the men. Although it is with the knowledge and consent of the Boer leaders that I give publicity to what is known to me of the methods employed in the Secret Service of the Boers, I do not wish to convey the impression that these events of the war at any time bore an official character. It is a purely personal narrative and has only been written at the repeated request, during the last ten years, of the many friends associated with the experiences of the diarist and of the principal characters appearing in this book. In order to preserve the historical value of the book no fictitious names have been employed. There are, as far as we know, very few records of this nature in existence, owing to the dangers connected with keeping a diary under martial law, and it seemed a pity, therefore, to withhold from the public materials which may be of use to those who are interested in studying or writing the history of those critical years. I cannot vouch for the truth of every war rumour related here, nor for the accuracy of the information which I have obtained from other people, but the experiences of the diarist, as they were recorded from day to day, are correct in every detail. My Dutch edition of this book, Die Kappie Kommando, is now appearing in the Dutch South African bi-monthly journal, Die Brandwag, and will, when completed, be published in book form in Holland. --The Author
This book offers a comprehensive political biography of Kingsley Ozuomba Mbadiwe, (1915-1990), a central figure in Nigerian political history for more than forty years. Starting in 1936 as a protege of Nnamdi Azikiwe, then Nigeria's most renowned nationalist, Mbadiwe himself by the 1950s became a frontline nationalist. And next to Tafawa Balewa from the North who became Prime Minster in 1957, he was the most important figure in the Nigerian Federal Government between 1952 and Nigeria's first military coup in 1966. During this time he held a succession of important Cabinet positions and was Parliamentary Leader of the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC), which was in a ruling alliance with the Northern People's Congress (NPC). In contrast, his older prominent political contemporaries, Azikiwe of the Eastern Region, Igbo Leader of the NCNC; Obafemi Awolowo of the Western Region, Yoruba Leader of the Action Group (AG); and Ahmadu Bello of the Northern Region, Fulani Leader of the NPC, all carved out their political careers totally or largely at the regional level. Throughout his political career Mbadiwe's focus was always at the national level. Truly, it has been stated that Mbadiwe was one of the founding fathers of the Nigerian State. Nonetheless, Mbadiwe's ambition for himself to lead Nigeria and for his nation to set it on the path to greatness faced insuperable difficulties. In a country of widespread poverty, high illiteracy, and a grossly underdeveloped private sector, there were fierce ethnic and regional conflicts for the control of governments and resources, leading to massive corruption and serious instability. This in turn led to prolonged military rule twenty years in Mbadiwe's lifetime which was often more corrupt and repressive than civilian rule, and was bitterly deprecated by Mbadiwe.
This handbook provides an overview of the society, culture, geography, history, and politics of contemporary Egypt. While such historic monuments as the pyramids at Giza, the Karnak Temple, and the Valley of the Kings draw visitors to Egypt each year, the country is today a large and varied collection of some 79 million people. An important political and cultural force in the Middle East and home to one of Africa's most advanced economies, Egypt is rapidly becoming a major player in the 21st-century world. This comprehensive text examines all facets of life in Egypt, including its land, history, politics, and culture. It is written in a manner that makes the subject accessible and engaging for readers with little prior knowledge about the country, but also provides a critical analysis of the latest research for students and scholars familiar with Egypt and its people. Special attention is given to the historical period following the rise of Islam to enable a greater understanding of Egypt's contemporary government, religious practices, popular culture, and current events. Includes informative sections on Egyptian art, literature, music, economy, politics, geography, and much more Provides a detailed, historical chronology of Egypt from ancient times to present day Contains a bibliography, glossary, and index to facilitate further research |
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